Adding another partition\OS
Community Forums/General Help/Adding another partition\OS
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| On my computer I am running Vista 32-bit edition. How hard would it be to add another partition and install the 64-bit version on it so I have them both installed for compatibility reasons? Is it possible to add another partition without a complete reinstall of my 32-bit OS? Also can I then make my computer boot into my OS of choice each time or are there extra steps that need to be taken? Thanks for any advice. Jason. |
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| Is it possible to add another partition without a complete reinstall of my 32-bit OS? You can, to some extend: By far the easiest way is to add a brand new drive. Re-partitioning your existing drive would include shrinking your existing data partition, which windows itself isn't very good at. You may need a (commercial) 3rd party tool like PartitionMagic to resize your current partition without dataloss. Now, after you actually have the space for another partition, things will be easy: boot from your windows CD, and it will ask for the partition that you wish to install it in. windows will automatically detect equal or older versions, and set up a dual boot for you -- it will give a menu letting you pick which windows install to start. By default there's a 30-second countdown before it picks a default OS, but you can adjust that time from within windows. (Installing an old version of windows on top of a new version won't work properly: it may not recognize the bootloader and write all over it, breaking the newer OS. So no installing windows XP after you already have Vista set up, but you can install vista on an existing XP system and have it work.) |
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| And this should give me the best of both worlds? The compatibility of 32-bit and the speed benefit and other extras of 64-bit? Really I just want to keep the 32-bit OS to fall back on if I need it as some of my hardware doesn`t yet have 64-bit drivers. My older hardware should still work as it does now under the 32-bit OS correct? Thanks for the advice. Jason. |
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| My older hardware should still work as it does not under the 32-bit OS correct Possibly, but by no means guaranteed. 64-bit vista requires 64 bit drivers, and requires the drivers to be signed. (Under 32-bit windows you can get a warning that the driver is unsigned, click OK, and install them anyway. A lot of cheaper hardware didn't come with signed drivers to save a buck. Under Vista 64, it's signed drivers or nothing... So make sure to look at every component in your PC and make sure that it has 64 bit vista drivers: Motherboard, video card, sound card, network card, printer, scanner, webcam, *everything*. Don't just assume that it will work, because this was probably the biggest pitfall that many early adopters of 64 bit windows ran into. Especially older, discontinued or low-end hardware likely won't have working 64 bit drivers. (almost everything made in the last couple of years does, although I haven't found any cheap TV tuner cards that can deal with 64 bit) But: as long as your hardware is supported, 64 bit has been working a lot better than I had originally anticipated. My computer can switch between three operating systems: XP 32 bit, Vista 64 bit and Linux 32 bit. I spend 99% of my time in Vista 64, the only thing I use XP 32 for is the rare occasions that I need to connect to our office network using the Cisco VPN client (which doesn't have a 64-bit client yet that's compatible with our router) |
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| @xlsior, thanks for the added info but I think that you may have misunderstood my question, I originally said, "My older hardware should still work as it does *now* under the 32-bit OS." What I should have said was hardware that is working on my Vista 32-bit OS at the moment will still work properly even after I install the 64-bit OS if I boot back into the 32-bit OS. In other words, it shouldn`t cause it to stop working for some reason. Hope you follow :) Jason. |
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| Oh, yes -- the 32-bit side of things shouldn't be affected at all, provided that you are succesful in re-partitioning the drive it resides on. the bootloader allows you to pick the OS of your choice, and after you start up the other OS is nothing more than a bunch of files in a folder somewhere, it won't interfere. I thought you meant to say 'My older hardware should still work under 64 bit just like it currently does in 32 bit' Anyway, the repartitioning of the drive really is the most tricky part in the whole mix. There is another option as well: Upgrade the entire system, to 64 bit as-is (unfortunately you can't do an in-place upgrade for 32->64, it requires a reinstall) and rather than dual boot into the 32-bit version, run it inside a virtual machine like virtualPC. that way you can always boot into the 64-bit OS, and for the rare instances you may wish 32-bit, you can boot up the virtual PC. (The downside of that is that it's slightly slower than running it natively, plus you don't really have your hardware 3D acceleration so it's not really suitable to run modern games under) |
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